


Marrow

by WolfAndHound_Archivist



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, Sirius in Azkaban
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-06
Updated: 2016-02-06
Packaged: 2018-05-18 14:48:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5932180
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WolfAndHound_Archivist/pseuds/WolfAndHound_Archivist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Remus Lupin towards the end of his twelve years in Azkaban.</p>
            </blockquote>





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**Author's Note:**

> Note from Lassenia, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Wolf and Hound](http://fanlore.org/wiki/Wolf_and_Hound), which was created to make stories posted to the Sirius_Black_and_Remus_Lupin Yahoo! mailing list easier to find. However, even though I still love the fandom, I am no longer active in it and do not have the time to maintain it. To preserve the archive, I began manually importing its works to the AO3 as an Open Doors-approved project in December 2015. I posted an announcement with Open Doors, but we may not have reached everyone. If you are (or know) this creator, please contact me using the e-mail address on the [Wolf and Hound collection profile](http://archiveofourown.org/collections/wolfandhound/profile).

I, too, know Azkaban. Cold, yes, empty and dark, but what is not understood is that light is not welcome. Were there light, all you could see is yourself. That would make it worse. Already you are lost; you are drowning in yourself, in the muffled red world where you cannot escape your own skin. 

Yes, I have known Azkaban, twelve years of Azkaban. They pluck every ripe memory from you there, it is well-known. But I have known things worse. A memory stolen can still be missed, can still be ached for. A memory stained, however, remains with you; tainted, useless, a twisted rag that only serves as a reminder that you are a blind sorry failure and your youth a wasted youth. 

When they take truth like a chemical bath and pour it over your life, you will see that there are things worse than a stolen memory. When every heartbeat and hitching gasp and lazy, contented moment is rotted away to reveal, thin and shining, the sour white skeleton of betrayal and corruption, you will know there are things worse. But even that is not the genius of Azkaban. 

It would be easy if it was only pain. Pain dulls; with lack of perspective it can settle into a dull hum; it can almost become reality. But this is the genius of Azkaban: they know there is a place inside that facts, evidence, eyewitness reports, surveillance tapes, testimony -- they know there is a place that truth cannot reach. 

Not your heart, no, that is so easily broken. Nor is it your soul -- too elusive and pale, too indistinct. It is somewhere deep and deaf and dumb in you, far removed from your mind and the sounds of the world without; the solid and unchanging place that, they know, is the real agony of Azkaban. 

What can be done with that place in your bones where blood is born? You cannot reach it, you cannot stop it. It is a silent weight in your limbs. It is the wellspring; it filters through your limbs, your capillaries, your heart and chest until it settles, lightly, on your brain, and you say it again, you say it again before you can stop yourself: "Yes, but what if? What if there is more evidence? What if he was mad, dreaming, controlled, innocent, someone else, somewhere else, what if, what if, what if this is all something else?" 

That is what they know. They understand that if your bones still feel beauty, the rest of you will always feel pain. They understand that a taste of bitter will be poison because your tongue still lingers on a phantom sweet. They understand that even when you die and decay, it will be written, mineralized, within your fossils: "I believe he is, he is, he is"; and that you would writhe through that torment for another thousand years as long as your jailer was the same man, the same man who drew out your soul through your soft panting mouth and breathed in something warm and heavy and _alive_ that settled deep inside you and cannot be removed. 

And that is the cruel genius of Azkaban: it is where you must live in your mind but where you are lost somewhere beneath. In Azkaban, they do not take the hope from your bones. They know that no matter how hard you try, you cannot, you cannot scrape it out.


End file.
